Tag Archives: 12th ave

‘Emergency fundraising’ — Velocity Dance Center’s future on the Hill up in the air

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(Image: Velocity Dance Center)

“Seattle’s home for dance” is in trouble. The 23-year old Velocity Dance Center says it needs emergency funds to avoid ending its year in the red and in uncertainty of whether it can keep its 12th Avenue space. Velocity says rising rents and increasing costs of operating in Seattle have made its current financial model unsustainable.

“It is an emergency,” said Catherine Nueva España, Velocity’s executive director.

During a “Community Forum” in the main performance studio of the center’s 12th Ave space on Tuesday, Velocity’s leadership answered questions from fifteen or so supporters. They also tried to galvanize them to rally support for its “Save Our Studio” campaign.

“We’re trying to raise $120,000 by the end of the year so that we can afford to stay in our space and to stabilize moving forward,” Colleen Borst, Velocity’s development director, told CHS.  Continue reading →

With its work focused well beyond 12th Ave, Broadway, and Pike/Pine, Capitol Hill Housing asks for help finding new name

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Dancers at the opening of Capitol Hill Housing’s 12th Ave Arts

CHS reported earlier this year on how Capitol Hill Housing is expanding its vision for affordability beyond its home neighborhood. With the new horizons will come a new name for the 12th Ave-headquartered nonprofit developer. CHH is now asking for a little help:

It’s time! We are ready to create a new name for our organization that better reflects our geographic reach and how we’ve grown and changed. Capitol Hill Housing (CHH) has served and worked alongside generations of low- and moderate-income folks to improve their neighborhoods since 1976. While our history is rooted in Capitol Hill, today we partner with communities across the Seattle area—from the Central District to White Center to Lake City. We envision Seattle as a place where everyone—from teachers and artists to seniors on fixed incomes to young families—can set down roots and thrive. Our mission in service to that vision is to build vibrant and engaged communities.

You can add your five ideas by September 16th here. Continue reading →

Sawant brings her City Council committee to CD for meeting on embattled 12th Ave restaurant, gentrification

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Council member Kshama Sawant was in the Central District on Monday as the city council committee she chairs discussed gentrification in her district while a local business sits on the frontlines of displacement.

At the center of the fight recently has been Saba, an Ethiopian restaurant on 12th Ave that has served the neighborhood for nearly 20 years. Saba is emblematic of broader change many longtime residents in the Central District see in which small businesses have increasingly been displaced. Organizer KL Shannon, who says she grew up in the area, said that she can’t think of one black-owned business anymore in the Central District due to rapid development.

“We want the kind of development that would allow small businesses of every origin to thrive here and for working families, regardless of income, to find affordable housing in our city because we go to work everyday and we make our cities run,” Sawant said. “We have the right to our city.” Continue reading →

Mayor comes to Capitol Hill to launch $50M affordable ‘Housing Seattle Now’ plan

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Mayor Jenny Durkan announced Wednesday two early-stage steps for more affordable housing in Seattle. One would allow the city to take advantage of a new state law allowing municipalities to use sales tax revenue to fund affordable housing. Another would renew and improve the city’s current multifamily tax exemption (MFTE) program to limit rent increases.

Durkan made these announcements in a speech in Capitol Hill’s 12th Ave Arts, which includes 88 affordable apartments developed by Capitol Hill Housing (CHH).

“We need more affordable housing in every part of this city and we need it as quickly as we can get it,” she said.

CHH’s CEO Chris Persons, introducing Durkan, stressed the urgent need for cheaper housing in Seattle and money for it, saying the organization has about 1,500 units in the pipeline but it doesn’t have the funding necessary to build them.

Included in those is a plan to create an LGBTQ-focused affordable senior housing project on Broadway.

According to the mayor’s office, the MFTE program, which provides affordable rent currently to more than 4,400 low- and middle-income households in Seattle, is expected to aid 1,300 new such homes by 2022, but without renewal, it would expire at the end of this year. Continue reading →

In a sea of Capitol Hill poke joints, Aloha Cup Bap’s Hawaiian approach stands out

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(Image: Aloha Cup Bap)

Its founders hope Aloha Cup Bap’s traditional Hawaiian poke will separate the shop from the sea of poke joints around Capitol Hill. The poke spot now has two locations around the Hill after it opened its second shop on Broadway this spring.

“Opening our first location a year and a half ago was a difficult job because customers didn’t really know what poke was. Now we have returning customers and wanted to open a second location,” said Tony O, one of Aloha Cup Bap’s owners along with Madelene Phung and Yuree Chong.

With locations on 12th Ave and now Broadway, Aloha Cup Bap is creating an island chain of fresh fish spots through the neighborhood. Continue reading →

Saba, 12th Ave restaurant at center of Sawant displacement fight, set for eviction

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Inside Saba (Image: Saba Ethiopian Cuisine)

Though the building it calls home won’t be demolished for months, 12th Ave’s Saba is being shown the door after a King County Superior Court judge upheld an unlawful detainer case against the Ethiopian restaurant whose fight against displacement has been championed by District 3 rep Kshama Sawant.

“We technically have a month left. But the judge read the lease differently,” Saba Teklegiorgis tells CHS. She says her mother’s restaurant has been in an unfair fight with the management company brought in to help push the tenant out by the property’s owners. Tactics, she says, have included claiming Saba had failed to pay its rent even though the restaurant found another way to make sure the landlord got its check.

“If they are within the law, I don’t know why they keep doing dirty things,” she said. Continue reading →

Seattle arts venue nomad Love City Love making new home below 12th Ave

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Love City Love’s new home below Stumptown (Image: Love City Love)

Love City Love’s fantastic journey of art and community across Seattle will bring the venue to yet another new Capitol Hill home.

With its move was marked by the disappearance of its neon sign that used to light up the former American Artificial Limb Co. space on E Pike, the nonprofit has created a new event space and art gallery under Stumptown Coffee on 12th Ave. At its new location, Love City Love will continue to house a variety of creative endeavors.

“Love City Love is an all inclusive art and culture hub. It is designed to bring all people together, connect, inspire, activate, and push cultural criticism of the status quo,” said founder Lucien Pellegrin who spoke to CHS as a representative of the collective. “Love City Love supports individuals who continue the conversation of how to re define culture, what do about our new found technology crisis, and how to create more spaces fostering human interaction and authentic connection.” Continue reading →

Man suffers serious injuries after pinned by construction vehicle on E Pine sidewalk — UPDATE

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A person using a walker suffered serious injuries after being struck and trapped by the trailer of a flatbed truck on the sidewalk in an incident Tuesday night along E Pine.

Seattle Fire and Seattle Police rushed to the scene just a block from Fire Station 25 and the East Precinct around 6 PM to the report of the work truck hauling construction equipment up on the sidewalk on the north side of E Pine just above 12th Ave. Continue reading →

CHS Pics | 12th Ave — Capitol Hill home field for Women’s World Cup

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If Team USA is on the field in France during the Women’s World Cup, you’ll want to be on 12th Ave.

Tuesday for the first game of the French-hosted 2019 tournament for the Americans, CHS stopped by our neighborhood German beer bar, naturally, to catch the game and the crowd. Continue reading →

CHS Pics | With more space to teach ‘how to be an adult,’ DIY community The Works expands on 12th Ave

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A 12th Ave space for learning “the basics” of a life on earth — like being able to sew a rad patch on your jacket or make pickles — has expanded.

“If you didn’t grow up in a house where you got to learn this kind of stuff, where else are you going to learn it?” posits Kellie Phelan of The Works.

The “DIY hands-on community” its expansion earlier this month at 12th and Fir just above the busy with construction and redevelopment Yesler Terrace. Continue reading →